


Let's Go To The Mall, Today

by softfloralbro



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, Game Night, M/M, Meet-Cute, Shopping Malls, discussion of the cultural implications of tacky shirts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22674100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softfloralbro/pseuds/softfloralbro
Summary: Lardo leaves Bitty in the fitting room while clothes shopping to go get a drink and finds a mustachioed man buying the ugliest shirt she's ever seen. Shitty accidentally abandons Jack to talk about the cultural implications of wearing bowling alley carpet on a shirt while drinking smoothies.When Jack walks out of a dressing room to ask Shitty if he's doing clothes shopping right, he doesn't find Shitty, but instead an adorable Southern stranger in the shortest red shorts he's ever seen.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Larissa "Lardo" Duan/Shitty Knight
Comments: 8
Kudos: 201
Collections: Bitty's Valentines Collection





	Let's Go To The Mall, Today

**Author's Note:**

> title from How I Met Your Mother's iconic Robin Sparkles song 'Let's Go To The Mall', which still gets stuck in my head nearly a decade and a half later

"I didn't know malls were still a thing," Jack comments to Shitty, riding in the passenger seat.

"They're dying, but they're not dead yet, show some respect. Besides, I did some research and this shop seems like our best bet for getting your beautiful behind into some real goddamn pants, Jackie boy. Honestly," Shitty says, as he hits him in the arm, "it is a _crime_ to fashion and to all of humanity in Providence, Rhode Island that you make this much money and you dress like this. Imagine the force you'll be when we get you some pants that fit the Zimmerbooty."

_X_

"Bits?" Lardo calls over the fitting room door. "I'm mad thirsty. I'm gonna go grab a drink."

"Huh? Sure hon."

She leaves the fitting room, and idly looks at the racks of clothes as she walks past them. Her eyes land on a mustachioed man holding up a shift patterned like bowling alley carpet. He's looking at it contemplatively.

"That's awful," she says to him. "You should get it."

"That's exactly what I was thinking. Do you think it's the wrong side of too much though?"

"Nah bro. It's exactly the right amount of too much. In fact, you should get an entire collection of bowling alley carpet shirts. Become That Guy."

"Like, lean all the way into it? Have the performativity of tackiness become an identity? I like the way you think."

She looks at him assessingly. Most bros she knows, especially bros with that good of a flow, don't casually drop words like _performativity_ into casual shopping conversations. Dammit, now she's intrigued. "After you buy that shirt, do you want to come get a smoothie with me?"

"Hell yeah."

  
  


_X_

  
  


Bitty opens the fitting room door and looks around, and finds not Lardo, but a man with the sharpest cheekbones he's ever seen in real life looking lost.

"Shits?" The man calls as he's looking around. His eyes land on Bitty, "you're… not Shitty."

"Well you're not too awful yourself," he says, looking him up and down, "but your manners could use some work."

"Euh, no, my friend's Shitty." 

"Bless your heart, sounds like you need some better friends." The man stammers, and Bitty decides to take pity on him. "You know, I was looking for my friend to give her opinion, but I suppose you'll do, Mr. Not-Shitty."

"It's Jack."

"Alright, Jack. What do you think of these shorts, do you think they're too short?" Bitty asks, turning to look at his backside in the mirror.

"No. They're, uh," Jack clears his throat. "They're good."

  
  


_x_

  
  


"Culturally as a rich white guy, choosing tacky clothes is a Statement that signals rebellion and bucking normative values," Shitty spills some of his smoothie as he gesticulates wildly. "But if my family didn't have money?" he continues, as he grabs a napkin to clean up the mess, "wearing tacky clothes would be seen as a moral shortcoming on my part or a sign I'm lazy and don't try."

"It is totes a class thing," Lardo agrees. "But it's also a gender thing. Listen, when you're a woman the worst thing you can be is ugly - which is anything left than societally perfect. Tackiness is a fun way to fuck with that."

"Fuck! Yeah, see that's the kind of insight I don't have as a bro. Like, socks and sliders? Mad ugly. I know this. I do this. And I don't catch shit for it at all." He's about to pose a question about the tackiness of student athlete aesthetics when it hits him - he totally ditched Jack. "Shit! I left my majestic Canadian moose to fend for himself in a clothing store. That's probably the least chill friendship thing I could have done. Wow. I gotta get back, but I very much want to continue this conversation and hear more of your thoughts on the cultural implications of tackiness - can I give you my number?"

"Yeah sure thing. My friend actually just texted me that he's made his purchases and will meet me at the car. Go get your boy." 

  
  


_X_

  
  


Bitty blearily walks into his kitchen the next day to find an unfamiliar man wearing boxers and the most atrocious shirt he's ever seen opening all of his cabinets.

"Bro! My dude! Where the fuck do you keep your coffee! Swear to god, I've looked in every one of these cabinets."

"It is in the cabinet above the coffee maker, notably the one cabinet not open might I point out, where any reasonable human being would put it."

"Oh. Ha, sorry thought I looked there."

Bitty levels him an unimpressed look. It is too early to deal with this nonsense man or look at a shirt with that many aggressively bright colors all next to each other. God he needs coffee. While waiting for coffee to happen (ugh why are coffee makers so slow), he introduces himself.

"I'm Bitty."

"Shitty," the stranger says. "Oh hey, Bitty and Shitty, we rhyme. We should like, I don't know. Start...something. My first instinct is a rock band for kids. But parents probably won't go for a guy named Shitty to replace The Wiggles."

Bitty blinks at him. It is still too early for this. Then something dawns on him. "Are you friends with a guy named Jack, by any chance?

"Magnificent cheekbones, magnificenter ass? Yep, that's my best bro Jack."

Bitty arches an eyebrow and primly says "I will neither confirm nor deny the quality of the second set of cheeks in question"

Shitty snickers.

"I tried to flirt with him, but he didn't really respond."

"No kidding, that was you? He's been kicking himself for not getting your number (or your name, btdubs) ever since. Lemme check with him first, but can I give you his number?"

Bitty breaks into a grin. "That would be wonderful."

_X_

lardo: anyways you're wrong about fast fashion and the cultivation of tacky aesthetics bro

lardo: also, god you should see bitty right now since you gave him your friend's number. he's on his phone all the time anyways, but god he's _besotted_ now

shitty: oh man jack has been grinning at his phone all week. i think i heard a giggle the other day? he is one smitten kitten, the fuckin beaut

lardo: i can't help but notice they haven't seen each other again yet though? like in their own time and everything, but god one of them should make a move.

shitty: you know, we could….facilitate that.

lardo: what are you thinking?

shitty: i dunno, something that's not too conspicuously a double date. game night? 

lardo: fuck yeah. friday night and me and bits'? you bring jack?

shitty: sounds like a date (:

_X_

"Lardo, is it silly that I'm nervous?" Bitty asks.

"Nervous that I'll kick your ass at board games? No. Not at all. Very valid concern."

"Ha ha," he says flatly as he rolls his eyes. "No about Jack. He's so pretty and I like him a lot and what if I say something dumb?"

"Bits," Lardo says, putting her hands on his shoulders, "you're gonna be great. You are an effervescent ray of sunshine, and this boy would be stupid not to like you. This is just jitters."

Jack and Shitty arrive and bring games and wine. 

"We're not going to play all of those, are we?" Bitty asks. "Between your stack and our game closet, we probably have like 20 games."

Shitty laughs. "Nah, bro. This way we've got Options."

Lardo gets out wine glasses, and proposes that the first game of the night should be charades. "I've got a stash of weird charade prompts from my art school days. Teams should be me and Shitty and Jack and Bitty? That way we don't have long-term friendship advantages."

Everyone agrees, but Bitty is worried because even though Lardo and Shitty have known each other exactly as long as he and Jack, they seem to have some weird psychic bond already. 

As it turns out though, he and Jack don't do half bad. 

Shitty and Lardo get off to a great start, with Shitty somehow getting 'feeding the ducks' within 5 seconds of Lardo pretending to rip off pieces of bread and coo at imaginary baby ducks ("it was the awe in your face that gave it away. That's just a look that says 'baby ducks'.")

He and Jack don't get out the gate quite as fast, but Bitty chalks that up to Jack drawing 'chasing a tornado' first. "Lardo, how the hell, what does this even mean." "The card says what the card says, Jack." He ends up spinning and then running, which turns out to be entertaining, if not illuminating.

Shitty then draws 'setting up a tent'. He starts by unpacking a bag and then threading the poles through the loops. Lardo only gets it when he starts kicking and swearing silently. Of course she would understand pantomime rage quicker than the actual prompt.

It goes back and forth, with Bitty winning a beauty pageant ("honey, I'm from the South. I've got this.), Lardo rollerblading ("Roller derby!" Shitty shouts. "Yeah, I'll give it to you." "That was really convincing Lards." "I should hope so, I played for 3 years in college." "Hot."), Jack blinking ("Confusion! Um, taking a test! Not knowing that someone's flirting with you!"). Shitty somehow captures the patriotic spirit of an eagle so well that Lardo actually guesses 'America' before 'eagle'.

The last round of the game, Bitty draws 'shopping at the mall'. 

"Oh I know exactly what to do for this."

He proceeds to poke his head around a door, and then go on a face journey of surprise, confusion, and the gay once-over. Jack breaks into a grin when he turns around and looks over his shoulder, while touching where his new shorts come to on his legs.

"Going to the mall", Jack says confidently.

This is met with Shitty yelling and Lardo smirking, not that either Bitty or Jack notice as they grin at each other.

After Shitty and Lardo win charades 4-2, Shitty announces their warm-up is over and it's time for the real competition to begin and brings out Ticket to Ride.

"Have we all played this before?"

"Yeah, but it's been a while. Can I get a refresher on the rules?" Lardo asks.

"Sure," Shitty replies as he grabs the instructions. "Gameplay is that you draw different colored train cards and then place your trains on routes of corresponding colors between cities. Your goal is to connect the cities on the routes that you drew on your ticket at the beginning of the game. Last round starts when someone places their last train on the board. Everybody clear on the rules?"

Yes'es all around, and the game begins.

Bitty quickly learns that board games bring out the competitive side of Shitty and Jack's friendship, although it does seem that Shitty is more interested in making everyone else lose, rather than winning himself.

Jack seems to block Shitty every chance he gets. He doesn't, however, seem to be interested in doing the same to Bitty. Unfortunately for Jack, Bitty is just as competitive, and does not reciprocate in kind.

Ultimately though, for all the blocking and backstabbing, Lardo comes from behind to win it all. The rest of them were so busy squabbling that they didn't notice Lardo drawing cards on every turn, until she had hoarded half the deck and began putting down her tracks in quick succession before any of them had a chance to block her.

Bitty still wins longest route though.

They end the night with Bananagrams. 

"Your goal in this game is to be the first person to use all their tiles to build a crossword. Each person takes 20 tiles to start. When you run out of tiles, you say 'peel' and everyone takes another tile from the center pile. The game ends when someone finishes using all their tiles and there are no more tiles in the center to take."

"So it's like competitive solitaire Scrabble?" 

"Yes!"

"Shits, you know I hate playing this game with you," Jack groans. 

"Yeah, because you hate having fun."

"What?" Lardo asks. 

"Shitty doesn't believe in playing real words." 

"They're real to _me_ and that's what matters."

"It's literally not, but okay."

Bitty gets the hang of it quickly - he was always good with word games. He looks over at Jack and immediately sees three moves he could play. Jack returns the favor, and they end up playing with each other while laughing at their friends' antics. Lardo is more interested in building sculptures with her tiles than words, and Shitty is insisting that 'fihej' is a word. 

The game ends when Bitty uses all his tiles. Jack still has 3, and Shitty and Lardo both have, depending on how you count it, have either all of theirs or none of them.

"I maintain that I did use all of my tiles," Lardo says. 

"Yeah, in your tile towers. Which is not the objective of the game."

"But I _did_ use them all."

Jack acquiesces and moves on to tell Shitty that he lost, by virtue of having no actual words-that-are-in-the-dictionary words on his board.

Shitty responds by throwing a tile at him, which quickly dissolves into a tile throwing fight. 

After laughing, cleaning up the tiles, someone throwing another tile, reprising the tile fight, giggling, and finally finishing cleaning up the tiles, Lardo and Shitty retreat to Lardo's room, leaving Jack and Bitty alone on the couch.

"I had a nice time tonight," Bitty says.

"I did too. You make a good teammate."

"Our Bananagrams competition wasn't hard to beat, but yeah, so do you," he says, scooting closer to Jack.

Jack looks down at him thoughtfully. 

"Bits, can I kiss you?"

Bitty smiles in response, and pulls Jack towards him. 

When they part, Jack smirks and asks "does this mean I'm your partner for the next game night?"

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to all of my friends who collectively make up everyone's game night strategies. special shout out to my uncle who plays to make everyone else lose, my best friend's girlfriend who is a Chronic cardhoarder, and my classmate who I borrowed Shitty's Bananagrams style from


End file.
